Fascinoma

It seems to me that where most of us have irony "conservatives" have compartmentalization. It's like they've had corpus callosotomies and so the right brain doesn't know what the left brain is doing, thus they can be sanctmonious and corrupt without the slightest cognitive dissonance, embarrassment, sense of hypocrisy or other discomfort.

The writings of Charles Krauthammer raise an interesting ethical question: at what point does it become permissible to spit on a man in a wheelchair?

Today I alighted from the Judiciary Square Metro stop and went south towards Constitution through the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, a truly weird, but at least low-profile bit of kitsch -- complete with names of the fallen etched in stone a la the Vietnam Memorial. I'm sure some of these fallen were fine people who gave the last full measure of devotion and fully deserve to be honored, possibly better honored than this. But I can't say that, in general, cops are my heroes. Most strike me, as I've said before, as gym teachers with guns. "Give a little man a little power," a friend once told me, "and right away he thinks he's powerful." Copthink, in a 25 words or less.

But I digress: what struck me today was the 30 or 40 children aged 10 or under in some kind of tan Sheriffs Association t-shirts and green safety-patrol sashes and camouflage hats like South African kitskonstabels being chaperoned around by adults in similar outfits and invited to genuflect before the fallen. A bit too Hilterjugend for my liking. But I guess your police state isn't complete until it has some child-soldiers.

Now that four dollar gas is here to stay the basic something-for-nothing premise of American Republicanism might get a wee bit harder to sell. It's pretty much always been: "A growing free-market economy will solve all our problems soon, finally producting that perpetual motion machine that converts lead into gold, or hydrogen into helium, or whatver keep the balloon afloat in the nonsptop orgy of more, more, more which will then last forever or until Jesus takes us away to Paradise -- whichever comes first." Now watch me drive my Hummer.

New definition for conservative: one who believes in the "free market" like virgins believe in unicorns.